According to the AMA – Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. This has contained a wide range of content as a section over the years including
Super Bowl advertising
Spanx
Content marketing
Fake product reviews on Amazon
Fear of finding out
Genesis the Korean luxury car brand
Guo chao – Chinese national pride
Harmony Korine’s creative work for 7-Eleven
Advertising legend Bill Bernbach
Japanese consumer insights
Chinese New Year adverts from China, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore
Doughnutism
Consumer Electronics Show (CES)
Influencer promotions
A media diary
Luxe streetwear
Consumerology by marketing behaviour expert Phil Graves
Payola
Dettol’s back to work advertising campaign
Eat Your Greens edited by Wiemer Snijders
Dove #washtocare advertising campaign
The fallacy of generations such as gen-z
Cultural marketing with Stüssy
How Brands Grow Part 2 by Jenni Romaniuk and Byron Sharp
Facebook’s misleading ad metrics
The role of salience in advertising
SAS – What is truly Scandinavian? advertising campaign
Brand winter
Treasure hunt as defined by NPD is the process of consumers bargain hunting
Lovemarks
How Louis Vuitton has re-engineered its business to handle the modern luxury consumer’s needs and tastes
I went down a rabbit hole when investigating a post that I have in draft at the moment and discovered The Mattei Affair. I got to find out more about Eni – one of Europe’s oil supermajors. Even though I had worked in the oil industry at the start of my carrier I didn’t have a good understanding of the story of Enrico Mattei. Despite the great work done in documenting the industry though Daniel Yergin‘s book The Prize published in 1990. Yergin’s book was recognised as the defacto history of the industry back when I worked in the oil industry.
Francesco Rosi
Who would have thought that a film maker would have been able to make a film about a prosaic story like the life of an oil industry executive? Francesco Rosi managed to create something special with The Mattei Affair. Enrico Mattei was an extraordinary oil industry executive who helped Italy recover economically from the post-war period until his death in 1962 in a mysterious private plane crash. Rosi has a very distinctive story style mixing documentary footage with docu-drama, often performed by non-professional actors. In this respect The Mattei Affair mirrors Rosi’s 1961 film of Sicilian bandit Salvatore Giuliano.
The story line covers different aspects of Mattei’s career and then loops back to the aftermath of the plane crash providing an innovative form of non-linear storytelling.
Rose’s film production became part of the story itself. A journalist that Rosi had used to research The Mattei Affair himself disappeared which added to the mystery surrounding Enrico Mattei and the film. Rose’s search for the missing investigative journalist became part of the film itself.
So The Mattei Affair is a remarkable film for all sorts of reasons.
Mauro De Mauro
Mauro De Mauro was the journalist that Rosi had hired to dig into The Mattei Affair and try to find out what had happened. At the time De Mauro worked for L’Ora newspaper based in Palermo, Sicily. He disappeared in September 1970 and his body was never found.
Hard to find
De Mauro wasn’t the only hard to find aspect of The Mattei Affair. For a film that won the grand prize at the Cannes Film Festival it had been very hard to find, even in the world of YouTube. It had a limited screening in the US with just one screen showing the film in New York back in 1973. It doesn’t appear at film festivals as a retrospective.
The BBC apparently tried to licence it for broadcast in the mid-1990s and failed. Bootleg DVDs of the film occasionally surface, but its never been licensed and released on Blu-Ray or DVD, which is very strange indeed, given the remarkable nature of the film and story behind it.
The New York Times review of the film published on May 21, 1973 described the film as an ‘immensely honorable but unsuccessful film’, rather like the reviewer was trying to bury a film that they themselves were intrigued by and had enjoyed watching.
I found the film to be intriguing, enjoyable and beautifully shot. I was haunted by the story that I had seen on screen and am puzzled by the film’s lack of wider distribution – given the significant nature of the film in its own right.
Subaru Impreza 22B
Nothing brings home the inflationary world of cars at the moment like this review of the Subaru Impreza 22B STi. This was the first Impreza model to do well in rallying after the legacy, though much of this was down to the disqualification of Toyota’s Celica GT-4 cars that had been previously all-conquering. These cars were sold in Japan and made it outside on the grey market import scene over time, there were less than 500 of this particular model made. One of these Subaru cars with just the delivery mileage had been put in storage for over 20 years and sold for £295,000 in 2020.
This Subaru isn’t a bonkers road going version of the Ford RS200 or an Audi Sport Quattro of the mid-1980s. This nicely kept, but worn in version of the Impreza 22B STi is still worth more than £200,000. By comparison you can buy a 1987 vintage Toyota Celica GT-4 from Japan (so it will have been well looked after in comparison to the UK, with just 77,000 kilometres on the clock) for about 4.2 million yen or £26,000 plus import costs. You can find even better bargains if you are prepared to have up to 100,000km on the clock.
For that you are getting a similarly fast Japanese piece of Group A homologation rally history in a smaller package and prettier looking. And its a Toyota, which means the kind of reliability that Mercedes used to be famous for. And with the extra money you can buy yourself a 1980s vintage Porsche 911 SC or even an early 1990s Porsche 911 Carrera 4 coupé.
Open AI takes on e-sports
Open AI built a machine to do for e-sports for DeepMind did for Go. The Open AI team focused on Dota 2. More from a talk by the Computer History Museum here.
All of this is very impressive, but we are still a good distance from having a ‘general purpose AI’ that works across multiple disciplines. Once the system is trained on a particular model, it can’t then learn new skills or areas of expertise and apply the knowledge across areas. The models used in Open AI are deep reinforcement learning (or Deep RL in programmer lingo), all of which goes back to the neural network academic work done from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s. It was first applied to a backgammon game.
Interest in it amongst technologists is due to one book first written in 1998: Reinforcement Learning: An introduction. The point being is that ‘AI’ champions like Google and others, haven’t moved the science of artificial intelligence on any further, but are throwing more processing power at it instead.
Your Hit Parade
I came across this 1955 TV show that was syndicated around NBC TV and radio affiliate stations as black and white film. It was interesting to see the way primary programme sponsor Lucky Strike was integrated into the show. Secondary sponsor ‘Pin Curls’ got a very brief mention at the beginning of the show, in a ‘blink and you’d miss it’ kind of placement.
“readings of radio requests, sheet music sales, dance hall favorites and jukebox tabulations”
Your Hit Parade chart methodology
The use of the word tabulate to indicate how the hit parade chart was compiled, implying mechanical computing in the background. I don’t know whether a juke box could of determined the number of plays of each record at the time. Dance hall favourites sounds particularly nebulous. Finally radio plays wasn’t included in the chart mechanism, instead there was the vague ‘reading out of radio requests’.
By 1949, we know that there were steps taken to try and stamp out paid placement aka Payola, but music publishers didn’t engage with this process in a positive manner. When it eventually became a scandal the big music companies tried to tie payola to rock and roll music. Independent record companies or music publishers frequently used payola to promote rock and roll on American radio. The reason for these payments was to get around DJs own biases regarding ‘black sounding music’. Payola got put under a spotlight after a congressional investigation in 1958 and 59 that killed DJ Alan Freed’s career and saw Dick Clark transition to television.
Hino Motors is a car and truck manufacturer best known for its iconic Hino trucks. It started its convoluted origin story spinning out of manufacturing company owned by Tokyo Gas.
Before there was Hino trucks, there were a small amount of half tracks and armoured personnel carriers made for the Imperial Japanese Army. After the war Hino got into the truck business and for a brief while also made cars. The pretty Hino Contessa coupé showed potential, but becoming part of the Toyota group saw Hino focus on commercial vehicles under its own name.
Hino trucks with their winged logo marked my childhood in Ireland. Hino trucks pulled palleted loads on taunt liner trailers, shipping containers and flat bed trailers of hay. The supermarket delivery wagons, the bakers lorry, skip deliveries, ready mix and the dairy picking up milk from my Uncle’s farm were all using Hino trucks. The distinctive unblinking three green lights on the roof of oncoming Hino trucks stood out of the total darkness of rural Irish roads.
I had Robert ‘Pino’ Harris to thank for making Ireland the Hino trucks capital of Europe at the time. And his Hino trucks success story is one of a singular focus on relationships and customer service.
Adidas ousts China chief as sales suffer after consumer boycott over Xinjiang | Financial Times – Allison Malmsten, sportswear analyst at China-focused consultancy Daxue Consulting, said that since the boycott, Nike and Adidas have ceded their top position on ecommerce apps such as Alibaba’s Tmall. In their place, local online retailers have promoted Li-Ning and Anta, making the “competition a lot stiffer”.Jonathan Cummings, Asia-Pacific president of brand consultancy Landor and Fitch, said that after years of market dominance, Adidas and Nike were being challenged by “cheaper domestic brands that have become stronger”.Adidas generated nearly a quarter of its sales in the Greater China region in the first half of last year, the bulk of which came from mainland China. – it will be interesting to see where adidas will try to go in China and whether they feel it is worth riling western customers to arrest their decline in China
The rising costs of China’s friendship with Russia | Financial Times – When the Russian invasion of Ukraine started two weeks ago, Jane Yan, a senior executive at a machine parts maker in eastern China, says she was not too worried about the impact. After all, buyers in Russia and Ukraine accounted for less than 5 per cent of the company’s overseas sales last year. But as the full ferocity of the Russian onslaught started to become apparent, the outlook shifted dramatically. Important clients in countries such as Poland and Germany cancelled orders with the Zhejiang-based company. “A Munich-based client said ‘it feels terribly wrong to send money to a country that is tolerating war in Ukraine — sorry’,” said Yan, who asked that her employer not be identified. She added that inquiries from European buyers have also fallen sharply since the conflict started. “I hope the war ends as soon as possible.” – I wonder how prevalent this consumer boycott actually is of Chinese products?
Culture
Why disco will never truly die — Quartz – interesting, but full of American privilege, but no love for producers like Giorgio Moroder, Luxxury, Dimitri from Paris, Late Night Tuff Guy or The Reflex
Ideas
How factory robots lead to human deaths – Futurity – “For decades, manufacturers in the United States have turned to automation to remain competitive in a global marketplace, but this technological innovation has reduced the number of quality jobs available to adults without a college degree—a group that has faced increased mortality in recent years,” says lead author Rourke O’Brien, assistant professor of sociology at Yale University.
“Our analysis shows that automation exacts a toll on the health of individuals both directly—by reducing employment, wages, and access to healthcare—as well as indirectly, by reducing the economic vitality of the broader community.”
Since 1980, mortality rates in the United States have diverged from those in other high-income countries. Today, Americans on average die three years sooner than their counterparts in other wealthy nations.
EACH NEW ROBOT PER 1,000 WORKERS LED TO ABOUT 8 ADDITIONAL DEATHS PER 100,000 MALES AGED 45 TO 54 AND NEARLY 4 ADDITIONAL DEATHS PER 100,000 FEMALES IN THE SAME AGE GROUP. Automation is a major source of the decline of US manufacturing jobs along with other factors, including competition with manufacturers in countries with lower labor costs, such as China and Mexico.
Previous research has shown that the adoption of industrial robots caused the loss of an estimated 420,000 to 750,000 jobs during the 1990s and 2000s, the majority of which were in manufacturing.
Can Intel out-design Apple in terms of chips? I think that is certainly possible, possibly even extremely likely
Can Intel compete with Apple on process? Possibly soon, if they managed to partner with Samsung or TSMC. Certainly in the longer term if Intel’s process engineers get their mojo back, or they continue to partner with TSMC or Samsung
Roundtable: A Brutally Honest Conversation on the Metaverse – Web 2.0 Is about the individual/the corporation, and Web 3.0 is about the collectivist statement, or the community / collectivist environment, in some ways. – interesting that there is a whole piece missing about web 1.0 being about personal and organisation publishing and communications. Web 2.0 being a web of data and creativity
3G graduation sees DoCoMo celebrating 3G wireless services and how they fitted into consumers lives. While DoCoMo has its service running for another couple of years, rival Au has shut down its 3G network this year. The ‘Graduation’ in 3G graduation is used in a similar way to how US technology companies use ‘sunset’ as a euphemism for shutting down a service.
In sectors outside technology like the 3G graduation film, the term graduation is signify an artist leaving an idol group. Japanese Idol groups like AKB48 and Morning Musume mirror the interchangeable team nature of Puerto Rican boy bandma Menudo. Like Japanese idol groups, Menudo appeared in adverts for big brands like Pepsi and McDonalds across Latin and South America (including Portuguese speaking Brazil). They even appeared in a Pepsi ad that ran in the Philippines. They also did two TV specials. Japanese idol groups contain pop stars with the following characteristics:
a type of entertainer marketed for image, attractiveness, and personality in Japanese pop culture. Idols are primarily singers with training in acting, dancing, and modeling. Idols are commercialized through merchandise and endorsements by talent agencies, while maintaining a parasocial relationship with a financially loyal consumer fan base.
When members leave the group due to contract violations, ageing out, or wanting to build a career of their own, they ‘graduate’. Like the 3G graduation film idols share an association with school imagery.
https://youtu.be/dKxjw3YntBk
Kit-Kat anime advert
Nestlé Kit-Kats are popular in Japan. They are especially popular during exam time. The reason for this is that the Japanese pronunciation of KitKat, “Kitto Katto,” sounds similar to the phrase “Kitto katsu,” which means “I believe you will win/you can do it.” The homophone nature of Kitto Katto meant that Kit-Kats became a good luck charm, with people having them or giving them as gifts for big days such as school entrance exams or even job interviews.
This explains why this anime advert directed by Naoko Yamada is around the theme of “Kikkake wa Kit Kat de,” or “Kit-Kat Creates the Chance,” and has a school related setting.
This is apparently the first of what promises to be a series of adverts being done by Yamada for Kit-Kat.
Modern car mechanical design
For someone who hasn’t bought a car in 25 years, hearing about how unreliable BMWS and Mercedes cars have become is a bit of a shock. I have driven hire cars and am aware that cars are now heavily reliant on computers. What I hadn’t realised was how cheap mechanical parts had become under the hood. The reason why they had been engineered down to a price, was to allow for the price of all the new electronics that make up the car driving experience now.
I started my work life off in a corporate research lab were we were developing a way of making a plastic manifold cover for a small Ford of Europe engine. This engine was destined for the Ford Fiesta and the first Ka if we had managed to get everything to work. The idea was that the engine would be a sealed unit. When it needed to be replaced it would undergo a factory recondition, or would be recycled. This was about reducing environmental impact, without impacting profits. But looking at some of the parts going into these cars now, I am shocked.
More in this video here.
Amazon luxury watch copies
Amazon is a den of iniquity in terms of shoddy products and fakes. German watch YouTuber shows the variety of watches that steal the design language of watches from the likes of:
Nomos
TAG Heuer
Breitling
Rolex
Audemars Piguet
Patek Philippe
All of these come in at about $100 price. It is interesting how the Chinese factories turning these watches out have managed to get their way around the brand police. Finally, I am surprised to see Chinese manufacturers relying on a cheap, but reliable Seiko movement for the most part. Which is probably down to the weird deficiencies in Chinese engineering that means that you don’t see Chinese made rollerball pen refills.
The amazing design of the jerry can
Great video by a Scottish YouTuber who covers why the jerry can was such a clever product design and the history of the fuel container. I did not realise that they were tested in the Spanish civil war. More here.
NFTs and Ralph Bakshi’s animated adaptation of The Lord of The Rings
The problems with NFTs. NFTs sprung out of the move to decentralised finance or cryptocurrency. NFT are smart contract linked artefacts. These were seen as a panacea for creatives to make money during COVID. This video is an interesting discussion on NFTs, and uses the analogy of investors buying real estate that drove the 2008 mortgage crisis. The crypto-economy has many of the same drivers.
The guy who made this video also did a really good exhaustive history of Ralph Bakshi‘s The Lord of The Rings film that preceded Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy by a couple of decades, and the BBC’s radio adaptation by a few years. I am a fan of all three, but am in no doubt that Peter Jackson’s film in some places is a shot-for-shot copy of Bakshi’s film and borrows dialogue from both Bakshi and the BBC.
Political polarisation between Democrats and Republicans
Political polarisation has been talked about for years. The schism in UK society caused by Brexit has been exhaustively examined including sometimes on this blog. This video is based on research by PRRI, you can see more about the research here. There are a number of outtakes in the data including the different party supporters relative openness to diversity and by implication societal change which was covered by Vox a couple of years ago. Republicans were reluctant to have a trans person in their family. Scott Galloway highlights that prejudice isn’t only about colour or gender identity.
We’re seeing Democrat supporters who believe that their personal identity is intrinsically entwined with their political opinions. They believe that a confrontation with your opinion is the same as a confrontation with your identity. All of which implies an underlying brittleness and lack of resilience to their prejudice rather than ignorance.
When Shinto became a religion
Really interesting video on the history and nature of Shinto, the Japanese belief system.
Artist creates personas for Singapore
I loved this project design that uses iconic every day items to reflect what Singapore might look like as a person. In many respects the items selected also reminded me of everyday live in Hong Kong. Which I guess goes to show that we have more in common than things that separate use.
Pets.com
I was looking at vintage ads as part of a wider internal project at work on Super Bowl advertising. During that time I delved into Pets.com content. One of the things I found was some outtakes that TBWA\Chiat\Day shot for use by San Francisco interactive agency Lot21. (Interactive agency ages this to the late 1990s, back to when the agency wanted to do both CD-ROM type experiences and websites in their agency in case this web thing turned out to be a fad.)
This content was designed to be held on the Pets.com puppet profile page, think a Geocities type page or author profile page on Blogspot or Live Journal. It all feels like the kind of things that brand teams would so for social platforms now.
Koyaanisqatsi
Philip Glass’ soundtrack for movie Koyaanisqatsi gets the 8-bit treatment with a remake by Shiryu. Shiryu calls it a remix, but really its a cover version.
Product design is pain
Mike Glover talks about how he and his colleagues problem solved to come up with the specification for the modern Opscore military helmet. Its an interesting story from a product design point of view.
You can hear about how they modified their old equipment and these alterations were then parleyed into the current industrial design by the manufacturer.
Ghost ships tankering black market oil to and from sanctioned countries around the world
Tanker companies warn of rise in armada of ghost ships | Financial Times – older ships are being bought and then used for sanctions running as these ghost ships. Ghost ships have safety implications due to their age. Given that these ghost ships are operated on the down low, they won’t have the same maintenance and you don’t know how their sailors are treated. What’s also interesting is the economic data implied by the ghost ships. Looking at this article black market oil (excluding pirate ships stolen in places like the Straits of Malacca) shipped by the ghost ships fleet is running at about 10 percent of all oil consumed worldwide. The fleet of ghost ships must have suddenly increased if the supply of ships being sent to be scrapped has dropped in the way it has. How have the operators of ghost ships managed to short circuit the ship breaking business? How are the ghost ships avoiding the world’s largest navies and surveillance networks? Will the number of ghost ships continue to grow?
Here’s a picture of Chinese tanker vessel, just to give you an appreciation of how big each of the ghost ships must be.
China’s Self-Defeating Economic Statecraft | Foreign Affairs – Observers routinely worry that by throwing around its ever-growing economic weight, the country is managing to buy goodwill and influence. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Beijing has exploited its dominance of manufacturing supply chains to win favor by donating masks and now vaccines to foreign countries. And it has long used unfair state subsidies to tilt the playing field in favor of Chinese companies. – the lesson that China seems to take away is that bullying works. Until China sees that bullying doesn’t work it won’t listen
Enemies of My Enemy | Foreign Affairs – The strongest orders in modern history—from Westphalia in the seventeenth century to the liberal international order in the twentieth—were not inclusive organizations working for the greater good of humanity. Rather, they were alliances built by great powers to wage security competition against their main rivals. Fear and loathing of a shared enemy, not enlightened calls to make the world a better place, brought these orders together. Progress on transnational issues, when achieved, emerged largely as a byproduct of hardheaded security cooperation. That cooperation usually lasted only as long as a common threat remained both present and manageable. When that threat dissipated or grew too large, the orders collapsed. Today, the liberal order is fraying for many reasons, but the underlying cause is that the threat it was originally designed to defeat—Soviet communism—disappeared three decades ago. None of the proposed replacements to the current order have stuck because there hasn’t been a threat scary or vivid enough to compel sustained cooperation among the key players – until now China’s belligerence in East Asia and wider
‘Lying flat’: Why some Chinese are putting work second – BBC News – there are young rural migrants in Beijing or Shanghai, who now realise “how far behind they are, in terms of being able to make enough money to buy a house, or compete with the city kids who grew up speaking English and wearing sophisticated clothing”. Dr Johnston explains some of this group may now be thinking of returning to their home towns and taking lower-paid jobs instead to be with their families. On the other side, there are the children of richer, successful parents who are not “as hungry as the super-achieving kids from poorer families”. Dr Johnston thinks China’s so-called “tiger” culture is an added barrier, where parents feel under intense pressure to help their child achieve, that school on its own is not enough
The Pandemic Changed Youth Culture in the Asia Pacific – What Does that Mean for Brands? – “proactively making fundamental life changes to shape a new future in a post-pandemic world which will never be the same again,” says Vice Media. ‘The Next Chapter – Re-Emergence’ is the latest from VICE Media Group’s ongoing series of youth culture tracking studies which monitors behavioural change to forecast the future of culture. The online quantitative study of 1,740 Gen Z and Millenials was conducted via VICE, Refinery29, i-D websites and social channels in Australia, India, China, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. – it looks like they expect to change how they work. If that means greater balance it might go down badly with Chinese and Vietnamese authorities who would be concerned that this looked like ‘lying down’
Pandemic triggers exodus of older people from UK workforce | Financial Times – interesting that businesses aren’t adapting to these new dynamics in the workforce, much of what is in the article is also echoes in this US IBM case. IBM Execs Call Older Workers ‘Dinobabies’ in Age Bias Lawsuit – Internal emails show IBM executives calling older workers “dinobabies” and discussing plans to make them “an extinct species,” according to a Friday filing in an ongoing age discrimination lawsuit against the company. The documents were submitted as evidence of IBM’s efforts “to oust older employees from its workforce,” and replace them with millennial workers, the plaintiff alleged. It’s the latest development in a legal battle that first began in 2018, when former employees sued IBM after the company fired tens of thousands of workers over 40-years-old. One high-ranking executive, whose name was redacted from the lawsuit, said IBM had a “dated maternal workforce.” “This is what must change,” the email continues, per the filing. “They really don’t understand social or engagement. Not digital natives. A real threat for us.”
Which London-listed Russian firms could be hit by sanctions? | Russia | The Guardian – Under the most extreme scenario, companies operating in the UK, US or EU – including most of the world’s major financial institutions – could be forbidden from any transactions with sanctioned entities. That could mean the indefinite suspension of their shares, and an inability to issue new debt or shares in London. Asked whether the UK was likely to impose sanctions that would damage the interests of big British companies, Bernardine Adkins, a partner at the London law firm Gowling WLG, said: “I’ll believe it when I see it.” “The modern way of sanctions tends to be very focused, and they’re not sweeping to hurt the economy,” she added.
Norton Rose directs Hong Kong office to make China pivot | Financial Times – Norton Rose, whose biggest clients include HSBC and AIG, is the latest international business to reconsider its Hong Kong strategy. Both the Mandarin Oriental hotel group and Pernod Ricard have asked executives to move temporarily out of Hong Kong in response to strict pandemic restrictions. Bank of America is reviewing whether to relocate some of its staff to Singapore. The head of a large recruitment consultancy in Hong Kong said similar changes were happening at other global companies. “As expats retire they are most likely to be replaced by Mandarin-speaking people,” he said. “The old set-up of having a local team who speak Mandarin doing the deal, but the guy at the top is white, that will change across the board.” – Hong Kong refocusing on being just another city in China – Chinese banks’ Hong Kong ranks on track to outnumber global rivals | Financial Times
Next China: Hong Kong Elections Uncertain as Covid Crisis Spirals – Bloomberg – there was little surprise this week when Tam Yiu-chung, Hong Kong’s sole representative member of China’s top legislative body, suggested postponing the election. His logic was simple: Some of those who might run will be too busy dealing with the outbreak to campaign. If more voices begin jumping in with the same line, a delay could very quickly become fait accompli. – way before COVID got out of control there were no candidates putting themselves out there. Even self publicist CY Leung hadn’t throw his hat in the ring
Why Are Luxury Labels Cheaper Online? – The Chosun Ilbo (English Edition): Daily News from Korea – Business > Business – According to Statistics Korea, purchases through overseas online retailers last year surpassed W5 trillion for the first time ever and surged 26.4 percent compared to 2020. Clothing and accessories accounted for W2 trillion of the total. The Korea Consumer Agency said a survey last year showed consumers here believe products are around 25 percent cheaper from foreign online retailers than in Korea. Yet importers insist they have no choice but to slap huge margins on goods due to high operating costs as well as tariffs and delivery fees. One staffer with a major importer said, “Department stores charge 20 to 30 percent in fees to sell our products, plus we have to cover advertising and store overheads.” But industry insiders say big businesses and department stores in Korea compete fiercely for exclusive import deals with foreign luxury brands, which ends up costing them a lot of money. They end up agreeing to unrealistic volumes and expensive advertising to bring in popular luxury brands and pass the cost on to the customer. Another reason is simply that demand seems insatiable, so people will pay whatever is asked. The head of a foreign luxury brand’s Korean branch said, “The market is changing in Korea and China where the more expensive products are, the higher the demand is. For instance, handbags must cost at least W9 million and coats more than W4 million to be considered a ‘luxury’ product. That means lower-tier brand prices are also rising.”
Musicians like Neil Young lack the market power to force Spotify’s hand over Joe Rogan – It’s a simple case of gigantic supply and relatively limited distribution. As the world turns to music streaming, only a handful of global players led by Spotify, Apple and Amazon control the market. Five companies represent 80% of the global streaming opportunity. Now, turn that around and think about it from an artist’s point of view. Spotify currently has 70 million songs and adds an additional 60,000 each and every day. These stupendous numbers have two implications. First, even when an artist like Young pulls his music from the service there are literally millions of potential replacements to fill the gap in a listener’s playlist. Second, artists cannot fuck with any of the big distributors of their music, because losing access to 31% of the market is the difference between success and failure for many of the record companies that run these artists
Foreign money funding ‘extremism’ in Canada, says hacker | Canada | The Guardian – A hacker who leaked the names and locations of more than 90,000 people who donated money to the Canadian trucker convoy protest has said it exposed how money from abroad had funded “extremism” in the country. In an exclusive interview, the hacker told the Guardian that Canada was “not safe from foreign political manipulation”. “You see a huge amount of money that isn’t even coming from Canada – that’s plain as day,” said the hacker, who belongs to the hacktivist group Anonymous. The leaked data showed that more than 90,000 donations were made via GiveSendGo, with most funds appearing to come from Canada and the US. According to the data, individuals in countries including the UK, the Netherlands, Ireland and Denmark also donated. Amarnath Amarasingam, a professor at Canada’s Queens University and an expert in extremism and social movements, tweeted that of the 92,844 donations, “51,666 (56%) came from the US, 36,202 (29%) came from Canada, and 1,831 (2%) came from the UK.” US-based donations totalled US$3.62m, while Canadians donated US$4.31m, he added.
Want to buy an Ineos Grenadier? Here’s how | CAR Magazine – In some very rural parts of the UK, for example, we will partner with companies whose franchises are agricultural franchises – JCB, Massey Ferguson, those kind of franchises. They are next to auction centres and livestock centres. Their neighbours are NFU regional offices, that kind of thing. Because that is where the customers go and they live and they work.
